Silence of the Lambs
by I'mAGeekNotANerd
Summary: This is a sequel to Childhood Innocence. PLEASE read that one first, otherwise this won't make much sense, but if you choose not to, okay, won't make sense. Now that Coulson has been a five year old, let's make LOKI a borderline catatonic, strange little five year old! Fun times...Don't worry, this isn't about serial killers, it's just the title I chose. :) Please Read/Review!
1. Chapter 1: Watched You While You Slept

**A/N: ****Hello my dear readers! This is a sequel to Childhood Innocence, and the story really won't make much sense unless you read that story first! Just a little heads up! And so, I am back by popular request: Silence of the Lambs, sequel to Childhood Innocence. Enjoy, and please Read and Review! **

**:)**

_"AGAIN!? AGAIN, YOU HAVE GOT TO BE JOKING!"_

_"Face it, Cyclops, I'm not joking. And it wasn't me! It was my robot - _

_"STARK, YOU ARE MY PROBLEM CHILD, DO YOU KNOW THAT?! YOU HAVE TO BE KIDDING - _

_"Look it WASN'T my fault - "_

_"That doesn't MATTER Stark! You were the one who left them down there UNSUPERVISED, and you should have known that the two of them are practically children the way they behave! You were irresponsible and careless and - "_

"When do you think that conversation's gonna end?" Steve asked from where he was seated beside Peggy, their hands joined and fingers intertwined on the armrest of the standard issue office seats that every official government building in existence seemed to have. Clint looked down from the ceiling, having to straighten his sprawled, slouched position in one of the uncomfortable chairs outside Fury's room.

"_End?_ Are you kidding me? _That_ argument is going to rage on until the end of time," he responded, tilting his head back forward as he began slouching once more as though another thought had occurred to him. "And then it'll rage on for a few millennia after that."

"Pepper hasn't added her two cents yet, and the Director hasn't even gotten to the fact that we basically fountain-of-youthed _you_ as well," Banner added from his post by the door's peephole, gesturing vaguely at the female agent seated beside the super soldier. "That'll be a whole other fiasco in and of itself."

"A very temperamental brouhaha," Romanoff added in a sage tone that earned her glances from all around the small group. Bruce coughed in a suspicious manner, and Steve guessed that it had to do with the Russian's word choice.

"I - I do not understand..." Thor began, great brow furrowed in concentration and bafflement. "What is a brouhaha?" This time, even Steve smirked a little and Bruce coughed a little harder, corners of his mouth twitching; it was just too funny hearing Thor say that word.

"It's well...it's a brouhaha, Thor," the assassin explained unhelpfully and went back to examining the cuff of her jacket sleeve. There was a loose thread and it was annoying her. Her clothes never had loose threads; it was a liability for when she had to move quickly. That and it just looked sloppy. Thor however, wasn't satisfied with his response. However, as he opened his mouth to pursue the topic further, Peggy leaned forward.

"A brouhaha is basically an uproar. A very noisy and cacophonous uproar albeit," she offered, but Thor's frown deepened.

"Then why not just call it an uproar?" he asked, and Romanoff rolled her eyes.

"Because brouhaha is entertaining to say, Thor. Maybe you should try using more complicated vocabulary," she responded, tone slightly acerbic.

"Easy there, Nat," Clint warned in a tone that said he really didn't care about anything she said. In response, she sat back heavily in her seat once more and crossed her arms, sighing in frustration.

"What's up with you?" Steve asked after she craned her neck around to check behind herself for what had to be the hundredth time.

"I'm waiting for Phil and Loki to show up. They've been held up by the medics for a really long time," she mused, finally shifting her position so she was sitting in the seat sideways with her legs dangling over the arms, hugging the back of the chair so she was half twisted about. "I've half a mind to go over and see what's going on for myself."

An awkward silence stretched out between them before there was a sudden flurry of movement and everyone was trying to shove past each other to get to the door and find their missing friends.

000000

"What's your name, little one?" The pen clicked and scribbled down the response:

_Blank stare._

"How old are you?" After waiting about half a minute, she added another note:

_No response._

"Do you know where you are?" The pen scribbled again.

_The deadpan expression continued._

"Do you know what's going on around you?" Another aggravating scratching of metal on paper:

_Nothing._

"Can you talk?" Angry scrabbling:

_Still nothing! _

"Can you nod your head? Can you move at all?" Scratch, scratch, scratch:

_Poker face..._

"Loki, you really need to answer the doctor's questions, okay?" the man holding the child tried, but he got no further than the doctor.

_Vacant stare once again..._she wrote, sighing.

"_Do you understand a word I'm saying!?_" she finally cried, exasperated, and wrote her final observation.

_Freakin' unresponsive. You'd think I was talking to a wall._

The doctor sat back heavily and sighed in frustration, throwing the pen to the desk top and looking at the agent helplessly.

"Is this what you were talking about?" she asked, peeved and put off in the extreme.

"That went on for about an hour...as I said, he just won't talk," Coulson responded and looked down at the little boy seated on his lap. "I mean, he really doesn't do anything except sit there and just cling onto whatever he can reach. Can you let go of my jacket now?" he added, addressing the small form. Again with the catatonic stare. "I happen to know for a fact I wasn't this problematic as a child, Loki, so you can't call this vengeance," the agent finally said, tone growing exasperated. "Loki, I know you're the god of mischief, but I really don't want to have to deal with your jokes and games right now. Okay? We really need to have you talk to us so that we can figure out how to fix this, alright? We need to know if it's what happened with me."

No response; no sign of any level of recognition and Phil sighed, looking up at the ceiling in a silent prayer for some sort of otherworldly assistance. "Please grant me strength in dealing with this..." he muttered before looking back at the doctor. THey both sighed simultaneously and the doctor shrugged in defeat.

"Let's go over this again. What happened after the accident?"

"Well, I went over to him and picked him up. He was just sitting there, staring at us all wideyed. I seriously thought he was never going to blink and then of course he had to go all leech-like on me and he hasn't let go of my jacket since. Even when he saw his brother Thor, he did nothing." The member of the medical staff frowned and reached forward to snap before the child's eyes and resisted the urge to throw her hands up in the air and storm out when the small being didn't even blink. Coulson shrugged and reached out to grab the glass of water, bringing it to his mouth to take a sip.

"It may be possible that he imprinted on you." The woman flinched as water sprayed all over her.

"_WH-at?!_" the agent gagged, choking on his drink. "What!?"

"He may think you're a parental figure, like - "

"Yeah, I know what imprinting is! It's - it's that thing ducklings do!" he cried, and looked down at the vacant child on his lap. "So, what you're telling me is that a five year old - "

"I'd say he's closer to four...but then again, he's Jotun. I don't know how they age," she instinctively interjected. However, upon seeing the agent's glare, she quickly ducked her head. "Sorry."

"So, you're telling me that a four year old alien thinks I'm his _mother?_"

Another awkward silence stretched out in the room before the doctor tilted her head to the side.

"Welllllll...I mean, it could be that he's just completely empty and vacant and just latches onto whatever is nearest to him as a survival instinct - "

"Well, that's not too bad; I actually prefer that to - " Phil began, eager for any other explanation to counter the fact that Loki now saw him as a parent. That would certainly not go over well at all when things got back to normal.

"But that would mean that whatever made Loki himself is gone. And that's not good."

Coulson just gaped, unable to do anything else.

"Uh, right." He nodded and stood up, still carrying the small boy. "Yes. Okay. Righhhtttt..." The doctor bit her lip and raised an eyebrow bemusedly at her superior's obvious discomfort. "I'll, uh, I'll just be leaving now," he said and pointed towards the door, wanting more than anything to just get back home, get back to the Avenger's tower, drop Loki on the couch and try and solve this on his own. He was not going to trust the words of doctors, not now, not ever. This just could not...nope. Nope, nope, nope, nope. Loki was messing with him. He had to be.

It was the only _logical_ explanation.

_He could just be shy of all these people. Yes, that's probably it, _he told himself in comfort and pushed the door open, stopping and allowing the door to close behind him as he saw the Avengers and Peggy, minus Tony and Pepper, standing before him, looking far too innocent with expressions much too sympathetic. It was almost as though he could hear their internal laughter.

"Any of you breathes a word about the imprinting thing to Stark, I will murder you in your sleep," he said seriously before marching, practically fuming, for the elevator.

"Do you think this is gonna go over well?" Steve asked as they followed roughly five minutes afterwards to place a safe buffer of distance between their rather pissed off agent and themselves.

"I don't think so..." Bruce admitted as they all piled into the elevator. "I mean, if Loki's imprinted that's awkward. If he's just...poof, gone...that's bad. That's like, _really, really bad_."

"He strikes me as a rather serious, collected person. He may just be a bit flustered right now. Maybe if we gave him some time, things would cool down, become more manageable," Peggy offered and Nat nodded, thinking about what she said. "Otherwise we'll just be making him more aggravated than he already is and then we would have to deal with him dealing with an infant and a bunch of overgrown children."

"I think we understand the situation," the god of thunder acknowledged, internally shuddering at the situation unfolding in his head. "When we get home, we should focus on detaching my brother from the Son of Coul. It seemed to be rather aggravating to him..."

"No, really, Thor?" Clint asked as the elevator doors closed in time to hide them from a very angry Fury who chose that particular moment to burst out of his office, a taken aback and clearly out of his depth Tony Stark following with an equally angry Pepper running after him.

"Stark, where the hell is the rest of your team?" Fury asked, glaring at the billionaire.

"Hey, what makes you think _I _control them?!"

000000

Phil sighed in exhausted annoyance and dropped onto his back on his bed. He had finally resorted to taking off his jacket and leaving it in Loki's tight grasp. The child had been left in the middle of the Frost Giant's bed and the agent felt no qualms about just leaving the boy there since he still made not indication of moving around or getting into messes. He just sat there, holding the jacket close to himself. However, when he heard a thud and the sound of something falling over, he practically launched to his feet and sprinted for the mini-god's bedroom, hoping that he wouldn't find catastrophe waiting for him.

Instead, when he opened the door, he found that Loki had thrown the pillows off the bed and had yanked the sheets up around himself like a little nest, accidentally knocking the desk lamp over with one of his surprisingly strong throws. The agent's jacket was pulled around his small form like a little blanket and the little boy had fallen asleep almost instantaneously, dark raven hair falling sloppily over his face like a web.

Phil shook his head and sighed, walking over to sit beside the boy and reached out to pull the jacket up around his tiny shoulders a little more.

"Sleep well, Loki. I hope you remember _something_ when you wake up. Like fundamental words, maybe?" he teased and waited for a few minutes to make sure that everything was indeed fine before he got up and snuck out of the room.

He didn't want to become a victim of the boy's tenacious grip once more.

But as the adult slept in his own room, he couldn't help but ponder on the events that had happened; why wasn't Loki talking? He struck the man as a never ending little chatter box...except he might as well be mute at this point. Maybe he just didn't understand Midgardian as a child...

When he woke up, it would be to see two vibrant green eyes right before his.

"HOLY JESUS!" he shouted, and Phil Coulson, who prided himself on being a cool, collected, unflappable person, sat bolt upright, pushed himself away from the small boy who had been watching him sleep for who knows how long, and promptly fell off the other side of the bed to land with a resounding crash on the ground.

This was going to be a long, long experience.


	2. Chapter 2: Home

**So...I was thinking a human would have memory jumps, what would the god of Mischief and Lies have jumps in...and that made me think AHA! HE'LL HAVE JUMPS IN HIS POWER AND MAGICAL ABILITIES! oh poor Phil... :P**

"Okay, Loki there is something we humans have that we call 'personal space' and not stalking people," Phil explained, looking down at the boy seated cross legged on the floor before him. "It means we don't randomly show up right next to them without them noticing, okay? We like to leave some space between each other as well, so it's not that I'm mad at you, I would just prefer if you didn't randomly end up right next to me while I'm sleeping, okay?" He was beginning to realize why he had sounded so creepy and stalker-like when he told Steve that he had watched him while he was sleeping. Man, did he regret that.

Blank. Phil sighed and dropped his head into his hands. This was going to be a bit complicated. He looked back up, gathering his patience to try once more but frowned when he saw that Loki had backed off a few paces and was sitting father away from him. "Well, what do you know? You do understand some things."

Loki mimed shivering and rubbed his arms vigorously. Phil's eyes widened slightly, and the adult gave a small smile.

"You cold?" Loki didn't respond, but drew his legs up to his chin, resting his head atop his knees and staring off into the distance again. "Well, it's a start..." Coulson got to his feet and reached over to grab the blanket that had been on his bed, only to see that his hand was reaching out to nothing. He turned back around and saw Loki with the blanket wrapped around his thin frame, watching him with those wide eyes. "How did you do that?" Still with the blank stare. "Fine. I'll just watch the feed with JARVIS later." Phil walked out the door and jumped as he saw Loki curled up on the couch, flipping through a book written in some foreign language that he didn't know.

"Where did - how - _what?!_" He finally settled with that final exasperated word to sum up everything quite nicely. Loki completely ignored him and simply continued to read, oblivious of the fact he was now materializing different objects and teleporting from room to room.

This was going to be problematic.

* * *

As the door to the elevator eased open, the Avengers looked at the couch with something close to trepidation. Phil was sitting at the far edge of the couch, casting wary, puzzled glances over at the small boy who was flipping through a book that was obviously not from Midgard. Tony grabbed Banner and beelined for the lab before the situation could erupt like a solar flare; Clint and Romanoff quickly and discretely made their way to the air vents so they could mull over this most recent development in the archer's "nest" in the air ducting; and Steve and Peggy left to go and find a quiet corner of the tower to converse. This left Thor awkwardly standing in the middle of the kitchen with no where to go, and before he could make his move to vacate the premises, the agent pinned him down with a very serious request.

"Thor, please explain what's going on here," Phil said, voice tired, as the god of thunder watched his younger brother climb wordlessly into the agent's lap and start reading a book written in Asgardian runes with what seemed to be drawings that would be in a children's story book decorating the pages. His attempt to sneak unnoticed into the hallway had been pointless: Coulson saw virtually everything that happened around the house, even when he wasn't looking.

"He said cold to me. And then he started doing what I can only assume is magic. He somehow teleported my blanket into his hands and then teleported into the living room onto the couch right here. And now he has a book written in runes." The man looked frazzled and completely frayed, and Thor knew that there wasn't going to be much more of this randomness that the man could handle. Then, something lit up in the god's eyes and he walked over.

"I believe I actually know what's going on here..." the blonde giant began and sat down beside Loki. He started speaking to the boy and Phil frowned as the child immediately looked to his brother with piqued interest.

"Hello, Loki. I am Thor, your brother. We're here to help you okay?" The boy nodded slowly as though trying out the movement.

"You're speaking English...why does he know what you're saying?" the agent asked, baffled.

"Actually, I'm using the All-tongue. You hear it as English, he hears it as whatever language it is that he understands."

"How come he didn't do that when you were trying to talk to him last time?"

"I was speaking English. I forgot to try it before this just because i had gotten so used to speaking that language around you Midgardians.," Thor said simply and Phil shook his head, brain overloaded. "I'm speaking All-tongue right now for instance." Coulson just stared at him.

"I didn't need to know that Thor. Now my head hurts." Thor frowned.

"Why would the all-tongue make your head - "

"Thor! Just focus on fixing Loki..."

"Loki, can you talk to me, or can you only understand?" The boy frowned and blinked a few times. "Sorry. Nod if you can understand." The dark head nodded up and down. "Okay, shake your head if you can speak to me. Do you understand the language that much?" Loki frowned and just stared at his older brother. "I take it you can't." He went to pick up Loki but the little boy dropped the book and clung onto Coulson's shirt like there was no tomorrow, eliciting an aggravated sigh from Phil.

"Not again, please..." Thor was wise enough not to smirk but instead busied himself with picking up the book. "What is that?" he asked as he wrapped his arms around the small body on his lap. The asgardian's eyes widened.

"It's a book we read as children..." He turned the small book over in his hands, the smile of a ghost of a memory touching his lips. "Mother always used to read it to us...it was with this book that Loki learned his first words in the Asgardian all-tongue."

"Okay...how did he get it?" Phil asked trying to twist his body so he could look around Loki at the object of discussion. Thor shrugged and the agent sighed in aggravation. "That's helpful."

"He seemed to have conjured it up with magic...Maybe what happened to you with your memory is happening to him with his powers? His teleportation is what he can do as an adult as far as I know, as well as teleporting with other objects..." Thor commented, surprisingly insightful. Phil frowned a thought hitting him.

"Thor...how _far_ can he teleport?" The older of the Asgardian siblings frowned in response, completely stumped.

"That is a good question, son of Coul...I do not think he has yet reached a decisive limit - "

"And can he teleport people?" There was a specific train of thought that Phil was following, and he didn't like the direction it was heading in.

"I suppose..." Unseen to the two adults, Loki smiled at the book in his hands and pointed at a drawing of Asgard, of the Throne room. "Why do you ask, Ph - "

_Home_...the child thought to himself, and two seconds later, Thor was staring at an empty couch beside him with the book lying discarded on the floor, full import of what had just happened, sinking in after several minutes of simply gaping. _One moment, boy and man...next moment, air and sofa. _That was all his brain was able to grasp and comprehend. Finally though, the message hit him like a ton of bricks. _GONE._

"METAL MAN!" he shouted, and his voice must have sounded terrified since a loud rumbling was heard overhead as Romanoff and Barton scrambled to get onto the ground and doors banged open as the lab door and Steve's bedroom door were both slammed against the wall. The super soldier and the agent came sprinting into the room while Tony and Banner practically jumped over the counter to get over to the stunned god's side.

"Where's Loki and Phil?" Tony asked, seizing the issue immediately. Instead of answering, Thor simply gesticulated towards the empty impression before him where the agent and his younger brother had been sitting moments before. "Thor...where. Are. They?" Again, random gestures and a small "eeeehhhhhheeeaaa" sound were their only responses. Romanoff kicked open the vent, making everyone jump and the two agents dropped to the floor, running over.

"What's going on?" Steve knelt beside Thor in answer and literally grabbed the god's head and turned Thor to face him.

"Thor...what happened to Loki and Phil?" he asked, voice dead serious and demanding an answer.

"Steve, let go of his head!" Peggy scolded and Rogers fought rolling his eyes as he let go. "Thor," she said firmly and he looked up at her. "What happened?" she continued, voice gentler. He made a poof gesture with his hands.

"Wait, did they _teleport?!_" Tony nearly shouted, voice jumping. Thor nodded. "_Where?!_" Finally, the source of focus in the room found his voice once more and his response drove Romanoff to near insanity and Barton drove the heel of his palm into his forehead while Banner sprinted back to the lab and Tony jumped to strangle the god.

"How should I know!?"

* * *

Phil looked around at the bright gold and stone around him, trying to wrap his head around what had just happened. He seemed to be in another realm, but he had no idea how on earth he would have gotten there -

His expression of confusion went deadpan and almost pissed off as he lifted the boy in his arms up like a kitten almost and held him up so they were looking eye to eye.

"Loki..." he began warningly and the small child looked at him wide-eyed. "What did you _do?_" The boy seemed to shrink in on himself like a little lion cub carried by the scruff of his neck. "Loki!" he cried, exasperated, and the little boy started. "Right. Of course you don't understand english!" Sighing, he brought the child close to him again and turned around, right into the chest or stomach plating of a rather tall person. He looked up to see a dark skinned man glaring down at him with golden eyes nearly hidden behind a massive golden helmet. The sword that he carried effortlessly by his side looked like it was sharp enough to cut the tall agent in half, and all Coulson could manage as he looked up at this new adversary was,

"Uh, hi." The man - if he could be called that - growled and took a step forward, Coulson taking an equal step back. "Uh, you're big. Um...right." He gave a nervous laugh before turning around and running, ignoring the fact that the little boy was waving over his shoulder at the massive giant now pursuing them. "Loki, now would be a good chance to teleport us back to Midgard. You got that? _Midgard. _Not wherever this place is. Loki?!" The little boy just giggled at the way he was being jostled around by the running.

"Great. Splendid. Wondrous." But just as he was about to continue on with his listing of words to ironically describe their current scenario, he ran full speed into the strange armored being that had been chasing them, sending him crashing to the ground where Loki tumbled out of his arms. But instead of crying or trying to get back to Phil, the boy simply laughed and pointed at their pursuant.

"Heimdall!" he said, laughing, and Phil looked between this "Heimdall" and the usually so silent Loki. "Heimdall" seemed as confused as Phil as he stepped forward to pick up the boy much like a lion, grabbing a fistful of the back of the boy's clothing and lifting him up at arm's length to scrutinize him. The boy laughed once more and reached out, trying to swat at the man's nose. The gatekeeper's frown deepened.

"Loki?" his low voice growled, the frown turning into a deep crevice on his brow when the boy giggled incessantly once more and tried to squirm out of his grip. He shifted his dark gaze onto Coulson, who promptly tried to defend himself.

"Not my fault," he said pointedly, pointing at the little Loki. Judging by the continued glare, and the now flared nostrils, his position wasn't any better, Phil decided, and came to the conclusion that he had best just sit here until someone told him what the hell was going on.


End file.
